The present invention relates to a cornering lamp system for a vehicle, which is capable of changing irradiation direction of a head or front lamp in cooperation with the steering operation of a steering wheel.
Automotive vehicles are provided with a front lamp for irradiating the forward direction in the night. Conventionally, the front lamp fixedly irradiate only the front side of the automtive vehicle. When the automotive vehicle approaches a curve, it happens that the advancing direction of the automotive vehicle cannot be sufficiently irradiated. Namely, such a conventional lamp system fails to sufficiently irradiate the advancing direction along which the automotive vehicle actually moves, at the time of the cornering when turning the curve or the like, resulting in the possibility of occurence of danger.
To solve this problem, there have been proposed in the art cornering lamp systems configured so that the irradiation direction of the front lamp can be changed in cooperation with the steering operation of the steering wheel of the automotive vehicle.
For instance, a mechanical cornering lamp system to move the front lamp from the steering rod through a link, an electric cornering lamp system to detect a rotation angle of the front lamp by using a rotary encoder to control it by using a servomotor, and the like have been proposed. For the mechanical cornering lamp system, it is required to implement dedicated design specifically tailored to the kind of vehicle on which it is mounted. Accordingly, this system is not so suitable for wide use. In this respect, the electric cornering lamp system which can be widely used is more advantageous.
As stated above, the irradiation direction of the front lamp is changes in cooperation with the operation of the steering wheel of the automotive vehicle in the conventional cornering lamp systems. For this reason, the electric cornering lamp system becomes complicated in construction, giving rise to low reliability and high cost.
Moreover, since it is impossible to change the irradiation direction of the front lamp before the steering wheel is steered, pedestrians or bicycles may not be illuminate until after the car starts to turn.
In addition, the conventional cornering lamp system is configured so that the of changes of the irradiation directions of front lamps on both left and right sides are synchronized to swing the irradiation direction of the lamps by an amount proportional to the steering angle. Since a swing angle is large relative to the irradiation range of the front lamp in such a system, there is a large discrepancy between the advancing direction of the automotive vehicle and the center of the irradiation range of the front lamp, giving rise to the problem that visibility cannot be sufficiently maintained during cornering.